GINS 1010 - International Law and Politics

Getting Started...

If you are just starting out, you may want to use an Assignment Calculator.

This will help you plan your assignment completion based on your due date.

Pick a research topic:

Read your syllabus (assignment instructions).
Pick a topic that interests you and meets the assignment instructions.
Narrow or broaden the scope of your topic so that it is "doable."

What's scope? Scope refers to the "people, places and things" or "who, what, when and where" that you are studying.

Use dictionaries to help with terminology. Encyclopedias provide background information, an overview of topics and issues and often lead you to further readings.

Online resources like Google and Wikipedia, while not always accurate, are a great way to orient yourself in a topic, since they usually give a basic overview with a brief history and any key points. Reminder: you cannot use Wikipedia as a source in your bibliography!

Step-by-Step Guide to Building your Search

Step 1: Write your topic out in sentence or question form

How ethical is international intervention in Ethiopia?

Step 2: Break your topic sentence up into main ideas or keywords

Ethical, international, intervention, Ethiopia

Step 3: Think of synonyms or alternate words to describe each concept

International - foreign, global
intervention - aid

Tip: Use dictionaries, encyclopedias, or a thesaurus to find alternate words.

Step 4: Add "Boolean operators" (AND, OR) to make a complete search statement

Use AND to limit or narrow your search to results that mention all of your keywords.
- ethical AND international AND intervention AND Ethiopia

Use OR to broaden your search to include synonyms.
- ethical AND (international AND intervention OR global) AND Ethiopia
- ethical AND (international OR foreign) AND (intervention OR aid) AND Ethiopia - Note: you can use as many synonyms for each keyword but OR terms must be bracketed for each term.

Step 5: Add wildcards to search for all possible word endings

A wildcard is usually represented by a *. This is also called truncation.

Your final search string will look like this:

ethic* AND (international OR foreign or global) AND (intervention OR aid) AND Ethiopia

Step 6: Consider Key Phrase searching

Some databases search each word separately. To ensure that your words are evaluated as a key phrase, enclose them in double quotation marks.

"human rights"

Step 7: Evaluate your results

If you are finding too many or too few results, try these tricks:

To broaden your search (find more):

Find synonym for each keyword.
Search for a broader concept ('dog' instead of 'poodle').
Use wildcards/truncation.

To narrow your search (find fewer):

Add another concept or idea to your search with AND
Use more specific words ('poodle' instead of 'dog').

Find Books and Journal Articles in OMNI

The library's search tool Omni is on the library homepage and lets you do just one search to find books, newspaper articles, journal articles, and other types of resources.

SEARCH TIPS:

Use keywords only, do not search using a full sentence. OMNI is not like Google. You cannot type in a question or sentence and get results.

Use an online thesaurus to help find synonyms for your keywords.

Use the Step-by-Step Guide to Building your Search above to create your search string.

After doing your search limit or narrow by:

Peer-Reviewed Journals
Resource Type
Publication Date
Subject
Language
Location

More information available here.

Omni Searching on the library homepage

How to do I get material that is not available in the library?

You can order journal articles and print material directly from OMNI now. This service is free and has a very quick turnaround.

Journal articles will be emailed to you and can be available within a few hours.

Print material will be available at the Library Services Desk and you will be notified by email. You can even have your material sent to another university for pick up. For example, if you live downtown, you may want to have your material sent to the University of Ottawa Library.

Watch this video to see how it is done!

If you need assistance with this, contact the Library Services Desk:

LibraryServices@cunet.carleton.ca
613-520-2600 ext. 2734

Find Journal Articles in Library Databases

Use the same Search Tips as found above in Find Books or see the Step-by-Step Guide to Building your Search. The databases are not like Google. You cannot search an entire question or sentence.

Tip: Most databases provide a way to restrict the results of a search to peer-reviewed or academic articles. This may be done differently from database to database.

DO NOT LIMIT yourself to these databases alone. If you are doing a topic that is economic in nature, check the databases listed under Economics, or if your paper has a feminist slant you will want to look at the databases listed under Women's and Gender Studies. Here is a complete list of Databases by Subject.

News Sources

Canadian Newsstream
Global Terrorism Database - provides information on domestic and international terrorist attacks around the world since 1970 with annual updates
PressReader - current coverage of over 1000 newspapers from over 100 countries in more than 60 languages.
Factiva - global coverage of major news sources

For assistance with news sources, you can contact me or our News Specialist, Ryan Tucci.

Policy Reports & Working Papers

Canadian Public Documents Collection - Collection of publications from Canadian public policy institutes, government agencies, advocacy groups, think-tanks, university research centres and other public interest groups.
Conference Board of Canada e-Library
NBER (National Bureau of Economics Research) Working Papers
PolicyFile (U.S. Policy) - Provides access to U.S. foreign and domestic policy papers and gray literature.

See a comprehensive list of Think Tanks

Research, Comprehension, Writing & Citing

Search OMNI on the library homepage for Academic Writing.

Help is available on campus at the Writing Services.

Research Skills Tips:

Start broad, then dive into the specifics. Get a good overview of your topic (see information above in Getting Started...). Then start narrowing down to more specific ideas.
Learn how to recognize a quality source. Not every source is reliable, so it’s crucial that you recognize good sources. To determine a reliable source, use your analytical skills and critical thinking. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Does this source agree with other sources I have found?
- Is the author an expert in the field?
- Does the author’s point of view have a conflict of interest regarding this topic?
Verify information from several sources. The internet is a big place, and, for the most part, anyone can say whatever they want online—many websites don’t evaluate their content for factual accuracy. Use the CRAAP test to help determine the accuracy of online information.
Stay organized
Use the Library!

Understanding the Academic Articles you read

Reading and comprehending academic articles is not easy. Use the information here to help with this process.

Writing Tips:

Search OMNI on the library homepage for Academic Writing.

Help is available on campus at the Writing Services.

You may find the following writing resources helpful as well:

Tips to avoid plagiarism

LEARN about:

Quoting, Paraphrasing and Summarizing.
This is an excellent video on paraphrasing which can be a little tricky.

TAKE NOTES: writing down page numbers and references throughout your research is a good way to save time when you need to quote and cite sources
NEVER copy and paste material unless you cite it properly.
At the end of each paper/report you must CITE ALL SOURCES you have used, whether you quote them directly or paraphrase the ideas.
When in doubt, ask for help!

Citation Resources

Citing Your Sources
Paraphrasing (Purdue Online Writing Lab)
OWL (Purdue Online Writing Lab)

Get Help!